Alcohol Policy Can Threaten Student Safety

Mary P. Daniels '02, whose name has been changed at her request, has little medical training, but last spring, she had to determine if a friend of hers was going to live through the night.

Taken to her room by friends after overdosing on alcohol, Daniels' friend threw up, drifted in and out of consciousness, and even went into convulsions.

Daniels and her friends chose not to seek their proctor's advice out of concern that the incident would be reported, skeptical of the College's promise that a student is not disciplined when seeking medical attention for an alcohol-related illness.

It was three a.m., and Daniels weighed her desire to keep her drunken friend out of trouble against the very real risk that he might not live through the night.

"There was a crowd of people there," she says, "a lot of people wanted to take him to [University Health Services], but we didn't want to get him in trouble."

Daniels and her friends chose not to bring their acquaintance to UHS, and he ended up fine the next day.

The College has long upheld a zero-tolerance policy on alcohol consumption--no drinking under the age of 21; no irresponsible drinking ever.

Still, even with such a hard-line stance on Harvard's part, students and former proctors say the system is lined with cracks that could lead to a tragedy much like that which occurred at MIT in September 1997 when first-year Scott Krueger died after overdosing on alcohol at a fraternity party.

Scared of the consequences that might come when an alcohol-related incident is brought to the attention of a University officer or UHS, Harvard students say they end up weighing the risk of severe disciplinary action with the risk of losing a friend.

Close Calls

"Every single school has a near-miss every weekend," says David S. Rosenthal '59, the director of UHS. "There could be a Scott Krueger every weekend, but for the sake of a caring community."

The College's policy on sick students seeking treatment for alcohol is, at first glance, quite clear. If a student's condition requires that they be checked into UHS, their name--but not the reason for their treatment--will be released to their senior tutor or assistant dean of freshman.

But it isn't clear how far this protection extends.

"While medical records at UHS are strictly confidential, that does not mean that the experience of going there is necessarily totally 'anonymous,'" wrote Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 in an e-mail message. "We are a small community, actually, and if you walk into UHS, someone you know might just happen to be going in at the same time for some reason."

Therefore, while UHS will not notify the administration of an alcohol-related offense, the administration could still learn of the incident.

For example, the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) is often called to transport a sick student to UHS. But they are under no requirements to respect a student's confidentiality.

"UHS is a medical treatment center, so the student has a right to privacy. But, when we're involved in the transportation of a student, we're under no such constraints," says HUPD Chief Francis H. "Bud" Riley.

In fact, members of the men's swim team report that they were disciplined because one of their underage teammates was interrogated by police--while on his way to UHS--about a party at which he got drunk.

Erik B. Patton '02 said he got sick after attending a swim team party and going to The Grille. Two friends found him drunk, stumbling around the Yard, and called HUPD to have him transported to UHS.

When the police arrived, the two friends told the police where Patton had been that night.

Patton said a proctor who accompanied him to UHS, after also being notified by the two friends, contacted Assistant Dean of Freshmen Philip A. Bean. Bean then asked Patton about the details of the evening.

Disciplinary action was taken against several members of the swim team involved in planning the party, according to several members of the team.

"UHS never tells you that you're going to be interrogated and questioned if you're sick, so that you can rat out your friends," says Charles B. Cromwell '02, a member of the swim team.

Another student, a junior at the College who also asked to remain anonymous, says she faced disciplinary action after a roommate took her to UHS after she had been drinking her first year.

UHS notified the junior's proctor of her Saturday night trip to UHS, without telling the proctor the reason why she was taken to urgent care. After the proctor asked the student why she spent the night at UHS, she told him the incident was alcohol-related. He promptly reported her to the Freshman Dean's Office (FDO).

The Law

Certainly, any college alcohol policy has to recognize the inescapable fact that in the state of Massachusetts, the consumption of alcohol by any individual under 21 is against the law.

But if a college's primary concern is stopping binge drinking--more so than underage drinking--the strictest of policies may not always be the most effective.

Unlike binge drinking, "underage drinking isn't a question of morality, but a question of legality," says Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles.

However, if you accept the fact that college students are going to drink--a fact that some colleges do--then your efforts shift away from attempts to prevent them from drinking to efforts that recognize they will. The focus becomes ensuring the students' safety when they do drink.

This reality is nothing new for Harvard administrators.

"Harvard students do drink," wrote Lewis in an e-mail message. "The problem we do have is to persuade some Harvard students that six or eight beers in an hour is a lot of alcohol."

In large part, Harvard's policies are responsibly designed to accept this truth. Looming in the shadows of any discussion of this nature is the very real possibility that students will die from alcohol poisoning, and that is a concern that trumps all others.

Those concerns were highlighted in 1993, when Henry Wechsler, a professor at the School of Public Health, released his now-famous study of binge drinking on college campuses. The study articulated a perception that had been growing for years without any hard scientific data--that binge drinking was much more prevalent on campuses than had been previously imagined.

The study was the first to evaluate so-called "secondary binge effects"--the consequences of drinking born by students who do not, themselves, drink. These effects include everything from the sober roommate who stays up all night take care of the drunk roommate to the woman who is sexually assaulted by an intoxicated acquaintance.

With the study in mind, two considerations emerged for college administrators crafting policy. The first and most urgent, college administrators say, is that of abusive drinking--drinking that hurts drinkers and the people they come into contact with.

The second is underage drinking.

And while in theory, an underage drinker can drink responsibly, just as it is possible for a legal drinker to drink irresponsibly, the College's zero-tolerance policy is designed to prevent both abusive and underage drinking.

But according to some students and former proctors, Harvard's alcohol policy, like any other, is not perfect, and some of its kinks are counter-productive.

Absolute Enforcement

One frequent target of these critics is the requirement that freshman proctors refer any and all alcohol incidents to the FDO.

It's a policy that seems unique to Harvard. The residential advisers at Princeton and first-year counselors at Yale are under no such obligation to report their students.

"RAs cannot be expected to be both monitors and confidants," wrote Wechsler in his binge drinking study.

And it seems that Harvard has chosen that they be the former--agents of the University, required to report any offense that comes to their attention.

"Your proctors are specifically reminded that they cannot promise you confidentiality," says Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth Studley Nathans.

But in requiring proctors to report their students, Harvard first-years lose someone they can confide in--a factor that Wechsler describes as crucial for a student first tasting independence.

"It's extemely important to have someone to talk to, whether it's an older peer or a faculty member," Wechsler says.

Nathans agrees that students should have some sort of confidant in the administration but disagrees that proctors properly fill this role--the United Ministry, she suggests, is a more appropriate confidential resource.

But unlike proctors, the United Ministry's staff members do not live in a first-year's entryway.

"[The proctor's] proximity to the student, that closeness, their ability to know someone on a daily basis, would make them better equipped to deal with issues when they come up," says Jonathan L. Lee '02.

Stephen T. Miller, a former proctor, says the requirement to refer any alcohol incident to the FDO "does make [a relationship of trust] more difficult to establish."

Another former proctor, who asked that he not to be identified, says he always felt it was inconsistent with the role of a proctor to refuse his first-years any discretion about what they report to the FDO.

"I don't think that any proctor that I've ever worked with sees themselves as a disciplinarian," he says.

Nathans says the reason for this policy is to ensure that College alcohol regulations are applied fairly and across the board. One group of first-years should not be immune from censure because they have a relaxed (though well-meaning) proctor, she says, just as another group should not be punished overzealously.

It's better, she says, if things are standardized. After all, the dean can exercise the same discretion that the proctors would have about what should and should not warrant administrative action.

This explanation, though, does not satisfy all students.

"The proctor has a close relationship with the student, understands the intricacies of his or her situation and can deal more level-headedly with any situation that arises," Lee says.

Indeed, the fact that proctors are not allowed to hold their student's secrets in confidence prompts some to raise serious question about whether students will turn to their proctors in cases when the wrong decision may lead to tragic and lasting consequences.

"It's a poor and short-sighted institutional choice," says Lars Noah '86, an associate professor at the University of Florida professor, who is an expert in tort law and food and drug law. "As a result, the information [the deans] get from their proctors may dry up."

Picking Their Battles

Princeton administrators prove much more open about their distaste for the drinking age and admit that their alcohol policy requires only the most basic compliance with state law.

Princeton students are still forbidden from serving alcohol to other students who are underage, but because of a loophole in New Jersey law, underage students are allowed to drink, provided the activity is contained to their own rooms.

"We're really putting our energy into the culture of abuse," says Kathleen Deignan, an administrator in Princeton's dean of student life office.

Some Princeton students wonder how much the administration does at all.

"They basically let you drink, as long as you aren't troublesome about it--as long as you're not raucous and loud," says Willmot H. Kidd, a junior at Princeton.

The student perspective is telling, for an alcohol policy's severity is not measured by the policy itself but by the extent of its application. Colleges that enforce their alcohol policies are strict. Those that don't, are not.

"We really wish we didn't have to deal with a 19-year-old who's having a beer watching the World Series," Deignan says.

Alexander G. Liebman, a junior at Yale University, says the administration at his school is pretty relaxed about alcohol--in part, he says, because of concern for the safety of their students.

"My take on it," he says, "is that they want to keep people from searching far and wide for alcohol and getting into dangerous situations.... If there's a problem with someone drinking, then all the support resources are right here, instead of someone getting drunk at some frat party and passing out in the basement."

But Harvard's policy is different than his counterparts at other Ivies.

When asked in an e-mail message about how the College should respond to underage students who drink a beer while watching the Super Bowl, he wrote, "This behavior is illegal."

Parag Y. Shah '02 says that he has gotten a dean's warning on more than one occasion for drinking casually and responsibly with friends.

"Their standard operating procedure is a zero tolerance procedure--you have one beer and you're wrong," he says.

In fact, some college administrators at Harvard and beyond say they have mixed feelings about the law. There is a pervading sense that colleges forbid alcohol to students under the age of 21 only because they think it is important that students obey the law, even if they themselves do not agree with it.

"Red lights--may be tiresome, but we do obey them," Dean Knowles explained.

In the past, Harvard's policies were less strictly enforced.

When Kelsey D. Wirth '91 was a first-year in Massachusetts Hall, it never occurred to her that she might get in trouble for throwing a party in her room. Although Harvard had an alcohol policy on the books, it was, she remembers, mostly a formality.

"Everyone had a good time, and there didn't seem to be any enforcement of the rules," she says.

The guys who lived downstairs from her, Wirth recounted, often had kegs in their room. Once, she says, when one of the kegs sprung a leak, beer dripped through the floor and into the administrative offices only floor above the office of then-president Derek C. Bok.

"The guys got their hands slapped," she recalls. "Everyone thought it was funny."

But for Lewis, the College does not enforce its alcohol policy for the sake of being punitive, explaining that in his five years as dean, no student has been sanctioned by the Administrative Board solely for underage drinking.

Instead, Harvard's attitude toward drinking is prompted more by a concern for the wellness of its undergraduates, who, Lewis says, are not often in the position to distinguish between responsible and irresponsible drinking.

"Students' safety and wellbeing are my primary concern, and all the unhappy consequences and accompaniments of abusive drinking," Lewis wrote.

"A large number of our disciplinary cases, reported sexual assaults, and the like are associated with judgment that has been clouded by drunkenness. If at all possible we'd like to have students understand these dangers in some other way than by learning from [an] unhappy experience."